My Journey to Wellness

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Just Breathe

Welcome to the week of “should,” “have to,” and all the lasts…Been through this before, this my fifth/husband’s fourth set of marching orders; it never gets easier. In fact, I’m pretty sure it gets harder, because the harder you work and love the community you are working in, it makes it that much harder to separate. I’ve said it before, that the saving grace for me at this point in time with this move is that we aren’t disconnecting completely from this amazing community that we live in right now, we still get to be a part of many things, it just looks different. There’s a lot still to be done here. It hurts to be leaving. A lot. For more reasons than I care to even count, professionally and personally.

That said, it doesn’t detract from the excitement of a new adventure too. There’s some pretty cool things about this new appointment straight off the bat that we haven’t had the privilege of in any of our other appointments yet, which is a blessing and crazy overwhelming wrapped all in one too. Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of things that need to be addressed too that have been dropped at our feet quickly that we’re already up to our elbows in and we’re not even officially in the office yet…that’s life, but it’s also an indicator to us that while we’re still in a state of overwhelm, this is exactly where we’re supposed to be, and we just need to be content in standing firm and consistent and we’ll ride out the first wave of testing.

This last week is going to fly by whether I want it to or not. Parts of me want to savor moments of it, and parts of me wants to climb into bed and hide from it. There’s so much to be done…I have so much to do, there’s so much that others are depending on us to get done, and the “shoulds” and “have tos” are stacking up to the ceiling. It’s not a matter of delegation or asking others to help…I just can’t hand someone my job, there’s little others can really step in and do for us right now, that’s one of the frustrating things too. Thankfully, where we can ask for help, we have, so for example, when we go to load up our moving truck next week, it’s not just husband and I–we’ve got a few folks to help us. Up to this point, we’ve done a really good job at balancing to keep ourselves sane, but as we approach zero hour, “no” can’t always be an option anymore–things just have to get done. That’s life.

Like this morning, I “should” be out on a bike ride, but thanks to circumstances I woke up with, leaning on my handlebars for ninety minutes isn’t going to help that situation very much. I’m tired, I’ve got a lot to do, so I’ll probably just get ready and go to the office early and get started on the tasks at hand. I’m completely emotionally spent. I have spent the last six weeks tiptoeing around everyone else’s feelings around this transition and trying to be the cheerleader. I have defended other people’s actions/positions/feelings, I have kept a mostly positive attitude to the best of my ability, I have not commented when other people have spoken hurtful comments to me in passing (including family and even my own staff that I love very much and I know didn’t mean it to be hurtful, but we all say things without thinking), and I have felt like I’m drowning in this sea of complete guilt falling short of everyone’s needs and expectations trying to get everything squared away in this transition. I’m human too…and I’m just empty.

This week is going to pass whether I’m successful at keeping pace or not. Hopefully there’s some grace in there somewhere, but I’m not going to bank on it. I will be very grateful for after Labor Day once we’re “officially” installed and things calm down and we can get down to business and get the routine going, there’s a lot of work to be done–and that’s an understatement, as we’ve brought to the surface in just a short time just some of what needs to see the light of day. One foot in front of the other. Take a deep breath. God’s got it all under control, I need only to worry about the single next thing in front of me. As my favorite mantra goes, “what’s the next right action?” Hopefully with a positive memory or end or two in there this week…I would really prefer not to spend the week answering 5000 questions until I can address it in my timing or crying (yeah, right, lemme know how that works for you).

…and yes, there still is a blow-by-blow post of Salinas Valley Half Marathon coming, it’s in my drafts, just haven’t had time to finish it. You know, life.